


Per Astra Ad Aspera

by Liquid_Lyrium



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Has PTSD (Good Omens), Crowley Has Self-Esteem Issues (Good Omens), Crowley has Trauma from the Fall (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Footnotes, Healing, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, Missing Scene, Other, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Stars, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Wings, trying to learn better coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 10:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20974787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/pseuds/Liquid_Lyrium
Summary: "I can't ask you to relive that, Crowley.""Why not?"“Must you always ask questions!?”“Apparently, yes. Think that was the problem.”It might be their last night on earth, so what better time to have a conversation that's six thousand years overdue?





	Per Astra Ad Aspera

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Crowley's 6,000 years of pent up self-destructive tendencies and self worth issues, some violent metaphors, overuse of stars as metaphors and metaphysics. Some very mildly implied adult content.

“There aren’t any more seraphs in Heaven.” The angel says this apropos of nothing, as they sit in the penthouse suite of the Ritz. Agnes Nutter’s last prophecy sits perfectly centered on the perfectly square island of the full kitchen, the size of which puts Crowley’s to shame. The decor is modern and posh, but not the dichotomous[1] juxtaposition of the brutal minimalism and resplendent Rococo that the demon had chosen to adorn his flat with. This sort of display of wealth and consumption could never be _ tasteful, _ but it’s trying its best.

They’re seated on opposite sides of the prophecy, and the distance between them has never felt wider than this ridiculous display of opulence. State dinners could be conducted at this table for several smaller nations of the EU. Concurrently.

Crowley blinks behind his glasses. His mouth opens, words dripping out like tree resin before he can take them back, hold them in. “That so?”

Aziraphale nods thoughtfully, considering the prophecy so hard Crowley imagines that the angel’s vision is out of focus. Seeing through it to the electrons, rather than looking at the thing itself. Something about it unsettles Crowley. Like the angel has decided to re-arrange his bookshop and there’s motes of dust everywhere underneath the demon’s skin. (And he’s not due for a shed anytime soon.)

He waits for an explanation, but there isn’t one. His guts tell him to leave it be, to leave it _ there, _ but if he was ever good at that he wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t be what he _ is._

So he asks.

“What brought that observation on?”

Aziraphale shakes his head, not thoughtful this time. As if his vessel is trying to startle him into staying awake, even though he does not sleep. “Sorry?”

Crowley leans over the island, resting his elbows on the table, cupping his chin as though he doesn’t have a vested interest in the question. “What’s got you thinking about seraphs? Or the lack thereof?”

Aziraphale hums, “Oh I suppose it’s the prophecy. _ Playing with fire. _ Choosing faces. I seem to recall that seraphs are quite composed of celestial fire and that sort of thing.”

He feels the nerves that thread through his vertebrae light up. It feels like two knife-sliced grooves of star-hot plasma framing his spine.

Crowley’s never seen a wound he couldn’t make worse. Couldn’t open a little deeper. Form shapes nature, and all that. “You seem to recall?”

“Principalities and seraphs generally don’t—didn’t—have reason to cross paths,” Aziraphale says the words archly. Almost testy. His next words have the faint flavor of a lie. “Anyways I… It’s been a very long time since I thought about it,” the angel twists his ring, eyes pulled away from Crowley’s face back to the scrap of paper that is hundreds of years old, yet much younger by comparison.

He’s been jealous of authors the angel has surrounded himself with, of the books that Aziraphale touches with reverence and care, the scrolls he’s preserved over the ages like each one is a love letter, and the breeze that dares caress the angel's face—but a scrap of paper with barely twenty-three words on it is a new low in terms of the hierarchy of jealousy.

He flattens a hand on the island, putting just enough force behind the motion that it makes a noise. Draws the angel’s attention.

“So where did these seraphs _ go?” _

Aziraphale gives him a _ look _ that would wither his whole garden. “Really, Crowley?”

“Reasonable question,” the snake counters, giving the angel a shit-eating grin. “From what I recall, there weren’t that many seraphs to begin with.”

The statement throws Aziraphale, and his annoyance falls away. It’s like Crowley tripped him, and rather than a cute stumble the angel is falling down a palatial set of two storey stairs. Something much more awful and terrible is left on the angel’s face. The expression looks like it’s made of a suspicious amount of four-letter words that Crowley doesn’t approve of. One of them starts with _ p _ and ends in _ y. _ "You _ remember _ heaven?"

Something hot and made of starfire slides around in his belly. The lines along his back _ burn_. It’s familiar. A sensation that’s never far away. He’s not quite sure what he’s feeling, but he digs his fingers in deeper until they burn too.[2]

“Course I do. What kind of stupid question is that?”

Ah. Anger. Familiar. Demonic. Utterly appropriate.[3] _We’re having this conversation now?_ It feels too late. Like a slap in the face that the angel waited this long.

“I… well… I just thought… It's always been said your kind couldn't remember the… the before times.” Aziraphale looks at Crowley with such apology it almost cools the edges of his anger. Like a gentle layer of frost over a lake of boiling magma.

_ Of course. You would have believed their propaganda. Nevermind that you could have just asked someone from The Beginning. _

“Not much of a punishment if you can't remember how good you used to have it, angel.” Crowley looks at the smooth glass that’s suddenly under his fingers. He hadn’t meant to summon anything, but there's no point in wasting potentially good wine.[4] He pulls the cork out of the bottle with his teeth, employing a barbarous display to annoy the angel on purpose.

“I suppose so.” The angel says the words slowly, as if he’s never considered the possibility before. _ Course you haven’t. It’s Ineffable and all that. _ Sometimes he finds Aziraphale’s faith inspiring, sometimes it’s endearing, but right now it’s enraging in its implications. _ Never once have you ever really tried to _ look _ at the cruel things She’s done. Always trying to side-step it and find the silver lining. The great arcing design of the Plan we can’t see and aren’t entitled to know because why would She ever answer questions? Because how dare we ask to know where we’re going, and where this is all headed and why? Was that really so wrong!? Was it the worst thing I ever did? _

The demon closes his eyes and takes a breath. Aziraphale isn’t the one he’s mad at. Galling as it is, the angel even offered him _ forgiveness_. Crowley bites his tongue. Just one more thing to hold together, even as he tries to rip himself apart. He takes a swig from the bottle and the wine is just on the cusp of turning to vinegar. He can taste the impending change. The fall from grapes. “So, do you remember?”

Aziraphale looks him in the eyes as he answers. The demon finds he’s cravenly grateful for his flashy sunglasses. “No.” Suddenly he’s the one falling down the stairs, shock written on his face, chest hollow. “The.. altercation yes. Bits and pieces, but I don't remember anyone who Fell.” The angel looks down. Answering a question Crowley hadn’t asked.

_I don’t know you._

Crowley lets out a laugh that’s caught halfway between bitter and delighted. _ Satan above and God below,_[5] _ it’s always been true, hasn’t it? That’s why you say it all the time. _

“Nobody?”

The angel shakes his head. “Just Morningstar,” he says the words, hushed and apologetic. “Since he was the ringleader we were allowed to remember him, but once the dust settled-” Aziraphale stops speaking abruptly.

“He was a seraph, yeah,” Crowley curls his lip. A little fire on his tongue. The First of the Fallen does not generally appreciate his angelic origins being mentioned, but fuck what the First of the Fallen wants, frankly. “Two were snuffed out in the initial clash, but the rest are all among our ranks.”

The angel looks across the island again and meets Crowley’s gaze. It feels as wide as Eden. When they first glimpsed each other, from a distance. Long before the apple and the first rain. On perfectly opposite sides of the Garden. For the first time in a long time, Crowley has no hint of what the other is thinking. Like they’re starting all over.

And the angel is frustratingly silent.

The demon feels himself seething.

_ We are _ ** _having_ ** _ this conversation! _

"Why don't you ask me?" Crowley takes another swig of the not-quite-vinegar.

“About what?” He knows the angel isn’t this dense. Whatever he’s trying to prove is lost on Crowley at the moment.

“The Fall.”

He sees 6,000 years of unspoken curiosity and morbid fascination stir inside the angel, but he feels the other push it back. (He used to be able to do that. So long ago, but not for long enough.) Curiosity and temptation. Two sides of the same coin, but Aziraphale has vanished it like one of his daft magic tricks.

He looks up, the angel suddenly standing beside him. Not quite _ looming _ over him. Not sinister enough for that, but it sets that hot sliding thing in Crowley’s guts off all the same. In ten different directions.[6] "I can't ask you to relive that, Crowley."

He’s sitting in the Bently, decades prior, bathed in the neon glow of shops selling sex and other illusions claiming to cure loneliness. _I can’t have you risking your life_._ Not even for something dangerous. _At the edge of a pond at St. James’ Park. _It would destroy you. I’m not bringing you a suicide pill._ At the not-quite-debut of a play soon to become regrettably popular. _If Hell finds out they won’t just be angry. They’ll destroy you. _Up to his ankles in mud wearing a suit of armor two stone too heavy. _That would be lying._ _They’d check!_

It would be less bitter if Aziraphale would just say ‘_I told you so’ _ instead of _ this. _

"Why not?" _ I give you everything. Everything you ask for! Why can’t you give me this? _ He’s not due for a shed, but his skin feels _ wrong_. He wants to flay himself, pull himself open by the seams of starheat burning along his back. There’s dust under his skin, shaken from its tomb, and sulphur waiting at the bottom of his bottle.

“Must you always ask questions!?” Aziraphale plucks the wine from his hand. He lifts it to his mouth, and makes a face before it even crosses his lips. Crowley’s hand darts out and captures the angel’s wrist as Aziraphale lifts his free hand. The angel gives him a silent tut, the barest of admonishments, but he suffers through it and sips the nearly ruined wine. No miracles to soften the edge. To make it something palatable.

A wry grin twists Crowley’s lips. It’s an argument that’s lurked under the surface for 6,000 years, that has ebbed and flowed, where sides have changed. Crowley’s not so certain he knows where they’ve ended up. “Apparently, yes. Think that was the problem.”

The glass bottle rings like a thunderclap as Aziraphale slams it down on the spotless quartz countertop. “Stop! Do not use me for… this.”

“What?” Crowley wonders if he can shove his entire hand into one of the fissures along his spine. Up to his wrist. He might have to rearrange his shoulders to do it.

“...Torture. Punishment,” Aziraphale looks miserable, and Crowley feels the jaws of an ancient thing clamping down around his heart. Eating him from the inside. Somehow it isn’t what he wants. It’s the wrong sort of pain.

Crowley huffs, and grabs the bottle. Like a shield. Like an anchor. “Isn’t that what you’re _ for? _ To punish evil?” He takes another swig and he swears the wine finishes its change into vinegar halfway down his throat.

“I don’t have to be _ for _ anything that I don’t want to be anymore. Isn’t that why we’re here? Figuring things out?” Oh to have a spine made of steel instead of fusion, questions, and too many winding joints. His chest feels hollow in all the wrong ways, which doesn’t make sense because he’s a _ demon _ and that’s what he’s supposed to be, what he’s been for so long.

Only not with Aziraphale.

Not while the angel is around.

Crowley opens his mouth, and his throat makes inarticulate sounds. He blames the 300 year-old vinegar.

There’s a sudden weight in his lap, and he lets out something like a squeak. Only demons and serpents don’t squeak so clearly it’s a different noise altogether. His lap is full of angel, ridiculous camel hair coat bunched between their thighs. The angel’s arm is thrown around him, the weight of his hand on Crowley’s shoulder is unimaginably heavy.

“If you want to talk about it, because you want to _ talk _ about it, that’s fine. I’ll listen. Even if it’s right now, and Heaven and Hell decide to kick in the door at the same time. If you _ need _ to talk about it, that’s fine.” This close, he wonders if Aziraphale can feel it. Can feel the star core of him trying to leak out his back. Seep through his bones.

“What I will not do,” the angel continues, “is let you keep… _ picking _ at things so that they never heal, or heal back wrong.” He sniffs primly. Dismissive and so quintessentially _ English _ that Crowley almost forgets that they are beings older than Earth itself. Older than the idea of sides or borders. “And I certainly won’t let you use _ me _ to do it!”

Crowley reaches for the bottle, and the angel is the one to stay his action this time. A firm hand wrapped around his wrist.[7] He hears the angel’s unspoken words. _ You don’t have to drink it. _

He lets the bottle stay on the table.

Aziraphale is going to break him, and not in the way he wants to be broken. The way he’s used to. Familiar and predictable, if not comforting. Like the grooves on his palms. Part of him.

It’s terrifying.

“Now tell me,” Aziraphale lets his wrist go, wraps his arm around Crowley’s shoulder again. “What do you want?” He rests against Crowley’s once-perfectly done up hair. (Armaggedon is murder on one’s coif.) He can feel Aziraphale’s lips distantly somewhere above his scalp. It’s not a kiss, but it’s threatening to be in the neighborhood of one.

_ I want to talk about it. _

_ I don’t want to talk about it. _

_ No one’s ever asked me to talk about it. _

_ I’d rather drink that whole bottle of vinegar than talk about it. _

_ Every time I’ve tried to talk about it She never answers! _

_ There’s no point in talking about it. _

“Nyegh,” Crowley buries his face in the general direction of a tartan bowtie. “‘S not important right now.”

“I very much beg to differ,” Aziraphale crosses his wrists, completing the embrace.

“Dunno how much time we have,” he tries to wheedle. He’s very good at wheedling. “Probably should be focusing on other things.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale’s voice is soft. There’s a surge of energy around them and every hair on his body feels like its standing on end.

The thing about stopping time is, you have to know where all the stars in the universe are and where they’re supposed to go afterwards. Otherwise you run the risk of unmaking things or colliding galaxies. Aziraphale does not stop time, but it does slow down.

Rather a lot.

“Aziraphale-” his throat is tight.

“Right,” the angel exhales lightly. He’s winded, just sitting in the demon’s lap, and Crowley commits that image to memory. “This should buy us a little time, at least.”

Crowley stares at the angel, worry starting to gnaw at the core of him. The meaty core, not the one made of stellar stuff. “How long can you-”

“As long as necessary,” Aziraphale says firmly.

Crowley stares at the angel’s familiar face once more. The weight of him in his lap warm, the shelter of his arms comforting. The slow drag of time telling him that they’re at least somewhat safe.

He can see the strain at the very edges of the angel’s expression, but it is only because he has known this face for six thousand years.

“I don’t miss Heaven.” He shivers, saying the words out loud. “I don’t. And I don’t mean it in the sour grapes, ‘I’m not allowed back in, so your nightclub has to be bollocks’ sort of way,” his throat is still vinegar-raw. Burned. “I miss feeling… not like this.”

“Like what, dearest?” Aziraphale’s voice is soft, an encouraging whisper.

“Like I have to tear everything apart with my questions, with my bare hands. Like, like I need to unravel something every hour of the day? Like I need to be picked apart into nothing but scales and whatever else is in me that _ makes _ me this way. Sort it out into nifty little piles and…” _ put me back together right. Fixed. Something that isn’t this. _ “She put so many _ questions _ inside me, and all I did was _ ask. _Isn’t that what children are supposed to do? Ask their parents?”

The angel makes a sound deep in his chest, and he pulls Crowley into an embrace, not relenting until the serpent slips his arms under that coat, wrapping around that well-loved waistcoat.

“I always had questions,” Crowley mumbles into crushed velvet. “Like, like pollen in hayfever season. Just all stuck up in my brain. Never felt this… _ This _until after.” It’s baked into him. He just can’t decide if it’s a factory flaw and he was tossed aside because of it, or was it something he was cursed with after? Something that seeped into the broken pieces when he crawled away from the site of impact?

Aziraphale rocks him, and the gentle motion of it startles Crowley. Aziraphale doesn’t mind his poor reaction. The wrong reaction, and just rocks him gently until he finally relaxes, just a bit. He grabs the lapel of Aziraphale’s coat with one hand, his other arm still clamped around the angel’s waist.

“The Arrangement… Probably my best work. The longest fucking play at self-sabotage, yeah?” He lets out a bitter laugh, even as he can feel Aziraphale frown. “You were right.”

“Hush,” there’s a ghostly sensation at his temple that absolutely cannot be the angel’s lips. “Don’t pick. And I was an arse, so don’t hold my past self in such high regard.”

_ “Don’t pick,” _ he mimics, because after six thousand years it’s hard to stop jamming his fingers into every gaping wound he sees. There’s a pinch at his shoulder. It doesn’t hurt but it’s enough to startle him. Just enough of a bastard move in a vulnerable moment to pull Crowley back to the present.

“I didn’t slow down time for you to do the same thing you’ve been doing to yourself for ages,” the words are stern. “If you’re done talking, just say so.”

Crowley goes silent instead. He loosens his grip so he can sit up, look the angel in the face. “I dunno how to _ not _,” his throat is tight with the admission. “If I could _ not_… then I wouldn’t… be this thing.”

Aziraphale’s expression softens into something tender, again filled with too many four letter words for a demon to be comfortable with. A thumb comes up to trace the curve of his cheek. He says nothing. Waiting, not pushing.

“How do you not tear yourself apart? How can I not try to chisel along the cracks in me?” _ How do I not shout abuse at my plants? _ “How? How do I not pry open every wound and stick my hands in until they’re elbow deep like the world’s worst surgeon? How do I not ask questions?”

“It’s alright to ask questions,” the angel whispers this with conviction that tastes like vinegar on the air. “I always needed your questions, my dear one. Couldn’t ask them myself.”

Crowley makes the elegant sound of a strangulation victim.

He doesn’t know if talking is making anything better. The star-heat at the core of him feels like it could burn all of London away. He was never meant to contain all of this, all of what he is. Was.

“My dearest, you expect so much of yourself.” Aziraphale leans forward and his lips touch Crowley’s brow. He can’t deny it. Not when he saw it happen. “Until you can learn to be kind to yourself, we can settle for you not being cruel. How’s that for a start?”

“Ghk.” What he wouldn’t give for another swig of that vinegar-flavored courage again.

“Crowley-” the angel suddenly sags, staggering under the weight of pulling against the currents of time. He steadies himself on Crowley, bracing against the demon’s shoulder. “Crowley—later, I have… I have a sort of idea I think might… work. I can help make things quiet. Give you answers when you’re flooded with questions.” He drags his eyes across the demon’s mouth, and Crowley shudders as if the angel traced his thumb there instead. Aziraphale lets out a shaky exhale. “And, and I can be kind to you _ for _ you. Until, until you learn.”

There’s a burn. So thin and twisting, like a wire along his back. And now Crowley just wants to keep that line of fire _ closed, _but between the way he tried to pull himself apart earlier, and how Aziraphale is offering to put him back together, he’s not sure he can hold.

“Let me see, Crowley,” the angel whispers quietly. “Don’t bury yourself. As long as you aren’t-”

“Picking. Yeah, I know,” Crowley pushes his sunglasses up, meeting Aziraphale’s gaze wretchedly. “Could you feel? This whole time?”

“I can almost see,” Aziraphale admits.[8] “Don’t swallow it, my dear.”

“The vinegar?” Crowley grins and lets out a weak chuckle.

“Any of it,”Aziraphale reaches behind him, hand shoved up Crowley’s shirt and drags a cool fingertip in the space between scapula and the meteor trail beside his spine.

To Crowley’s utter mortification there is an _ explosion _ of wings. It feels like miles and miles of feathers unfurl and fill the room. There’s heat too. He can feel it. The fusion at his center is different. Helium producing carbon. He’s forgotten how long it took to Fall. There are heavier things at his core now. He wasn’t supposed to change into this. His engine was supposed to be eternal, unchanging, ever-burning and bright. He looks at Aziraphale, but the angel hasn’t burned away. From what he can tell, neither has London.

“I’m made of stuff just as stern as you,” again that arch tone. As if daring Crowley to say something about their forms. About rank that he’s not entitled to anymore, and wouldn’t have cared about even if he was. He smells the angel’s wings. Ozone and stardust filling his nose and mouth. Aziraphale must have pulled his out too.

Crowley keeps his eyes closed, and it helps. He breathes out long and slow. A few moments later he pulls in the heat, and closes the gateway to the once celestial, now infernal core of him. It doesn’t feel like tamping down, like swallowing acid. It just feels like setting it aside, and he feels lighter.

His wings rustle behind him. All six of them.

Aziraphale is draped across his shoulders like an albatross. White wings fanned out behind him.

“You can let it go now,” Crowley whispers. He feels Aziraphale’s fingers flutter and stir. Like he’s letting water or sand slide between them. He feels the rotation of the solar system resume at its normal speed.

“You’re so very warm, my dear.” Aziraphale sounds sleepy. A long breath stuttering against Crowley’s throat. He’s never heard that before. Not even at their drunkest. “I think I should like to remove my coat.”

The angel doesn’t move.

Crowley considers his options. As much as he wants to unwrap Aziraphale manually, the old-fashioned way, that would mean unpeeling the angel’s arms from around his shoulders. He snaps, and the coat is neatly hung up. Aziraphale makes an amused noise and looks down his arms, where his sleeves are rolled up just below his elbows.

“How scandalous, my dear.” He wants to lay his mouth over the upward quirk of Aziraphale’s lips. He’s never wanted anything else in his existence, compared to this.

Crowley considers hiding behind his topmost pair of wings. His face burns with a different sort of heat.

“Said you were warm.”

There are fingers running curiously, reverently along those wings now, but Aziraphale doesn’t have to move his arms to do it, so that’s fine.

“You didn’t have to hide these from me.” The angel sounds distinctly put out.

Crowley sighs and rests his forehead against the curve of the angel’s shoulder. He can feel the barest brush of Aziraphale’s skin against the back of his neck and that _ feels _ scandalous, the angel’s teasing aside. “Figured things would be easier if you thought we were the same. That _ I’d _ been the same.” It hadn’t been a lie, technically. Not really. Aziraphale has never asked, and Crowley has never told. They _ were _ both angels.

“It does explain a lot.”

“Does it?” Crowley can’t help the curl of his lip, the bite to the words. Aziraphale says it like it’s something _ simple _ when he’s never been that. Like six thousand years of turmoil trying to settle is _ simple. _

“Not everyone can stop time, my dear.” The angel’s hand trails absently down Crowley’s back, which he allows.

“Just have to know what you’re doing.” He stares at the fabric of the vest and bowtie. He should have gotten rid of that too, only he suspects he might’ve fainted.

“And you’ve always known how to find me, wherever I am, whenever I’m in danger.” _ Not always. _He is a being of fire. Celestial fire might annoy him now, but he’s made of infernal energy. Yet the perfectly ordinary fire of the bookshop feels like it left a wound pressed against his ribcage, his pleural cavities. A canyon of scar tissue. Bigger on the inside than outside.

“‘S easy to ssspot the starlight in others when you had a hand in making them.” None of the stars he’d made even came close to comparing to the heart of Aziraphale.

_ Alright. One good thing. One thing I can’t fault you for. Are you happy? He’s flawless at his core. _

Predictably, he doesn’t receive an answer to his question.

Doesn't hurt as bad with an angel in his lap.

There’s the brush of a feather against his hairline, and he can’t fight a shiver.

“You’ve always been amazing,” Aziraphale breathes.

“You don’t know who I was. You can’t say always.” There’s another pinch. Firmer this time.

“I know who you were _ not _ by process of elimination, and thank Heaven you weren’t any of them. I also know who you aren’t in Hell either. You never belonged there… just like…” There’s a wet noise as Aziraphale licks his lips. The muscle moving in his jaw and receding back. “Just like you and I never belonged to Heaven.”

There’s a frisson in the air. A silence that freezes the room like the storm front of a blizzard. He’s clinging so hard to Aziraphale it must _ hurt_, but as they hold their lungs still and empty they both realize that… nothing has happened.

Aziraphale lets out a shaky breath. On par with the one a few moments ago. Crowley knows this admission was harder than pulling on the reins of all Creation.

“We are earthbound creatures you and I,” the principality whispers, his voice hoarse. “I know you.”

“Aziraphale,” the angel has never been more dazzling. He can see glimmers of the angel’s true form at the edges of his vision. The star-heart of him burning brilliant. His vessel warm and as close to human as to godliness.

His hands surge up, like vipers, and he grips Aziraphale by the jaw, and he is kissing the angel. Oh there’s a rightness here. Forget piles and being broken down into tiny scales and subatomic particles. Forget burning bright enough that his core goes out. Forget Heaven and Hell and the Almighty and the Fall. Forget Earth and Eden. Forget everything but _ this, _ but this moment here.

And he doesn’t truly have the energy for it, but he stops time anyway.[9] Just so he can stand, and sweep the angel into his arms as Aziraphale threads his arm between his too-many wings and grips him tight.

Loving Aziraphale is not the same as being kind to himself, as not hating what he has become, but it will do for now. As it as always done.

One of them, both of them maybe, beats their wings and the prophecy flutters off the island and onto the floor. Crowley only notices because Azirapahle _ doesn’t, _ and he feels a ridiculous flood of endorphins. Like he’s triumphed over an adversary.

He presses the angel back against the countertop kissing him with the desperation of the condemned, working the buttons on Aziraphale’s vest. His hands shake as he opens the last one, and they continue to shake as he reaches for the scrap of tartan cloth at the angel’s neck.

Aziraphale—_his_ angel—places steadying hands over his and guides him through untying the bowtie. Crowley feels his knees tremble. He’s dizzy. But maybe that’s just the result of trying to hold Aziraphale in his hands while he holds time still.

“Dearest, my sun, moon, and stars,” Aziraphale’s breath has never smelled sweeter than after being kissed. Flutters against Crowley’s lips like flower petals. “I am happy to be yours, but can we possibly make the agonizing journey to the bedroom?”

Crowley chuckles and sweeps a brand of kisses along the angel’s jaw. “Go to Alpha Centauri, if you like, angel.

“It feels that far,” the angel says almost miserably, and Crowley laughs again. He pulls back, and he folds his wings, intending to tuck them away but Aziraphale squeezes his wrist.

“If you’re going to keep holding time still like this, you’ll need all the focus you can spare.” The angel smiles, and Crowley _ knows _deep in his bones that he intends to make it as hard as possible for him to do just that. Just enough of a bastard, indeed. Aziraphale starts walking backwards, trusting that it is in the direction of the bedroom. A bedroom. This suite probably has sixteen.

Crowley only realizes he’s grabbed the wine bottle and raised it half-way to his lips when the angel’s expression shifts. He startles, and a little vinegar spills down his shirt front. He bites his lip, worried that he’s spoiled things. That it’s too deeply wired in his nature to undermine things. That he’ll undo this too, that he can’t _ really _ have this-

“Crowley.”

He meets the angel’s gaze. The familiar tug of starlight pulls him a step closer. And then another.

The angel regards him with something unknowable. Thoughtful. Something he’s become much surer of in the last well… it _ would _ be the last twenty seconds if time weren’t forcibly placed on holiday.

“Yes, I’ve changed my mind. I think I should tell you of my proposition now, instead of later.” He sounds like he’s asking after what tea Crowley wants with his biscuits, but something causes a flush to crawl up his chest and into his cheeks.

“Sounds promising.” He’s never been this thirsty in his whole existence and—oh hang it all. 

The demon swallows and he flicks the neck of the bottle with his other hand. The glass rings in the silence between them as he nudges the contents of the bottle just a half-step back. On the cusp of turning again, and he grins at Aziraphale’s exasperated expression before he drains the bottle.

Baby steps.

**Footnotes:**

1 Read: Indecisive.  [ return to text ]

2 Metaphorically speaking.  [ return to text ]

3 Crowley hates being appropriate under the best of circumstances. He hates it even more when being appropriate confirms his demonic nature. [ return to text ]

4 As it turns out it is not, in fact, very good wine. But it had once been strong, and the memory of that strength is enough. Crowley recognizes it from Leigh Ashworth’s stash on the _ Mary_. Huh. Thought he’d finished the last of that ages ago. (Not that he’d ever been properly compensated for averting that encounter with good ol’ Eddie Teach to begin with.)  [ return to text ]

5 Having spent much time in the cosmos, Crowley was of the opinion that spatial relations such as Above and Below were all a matter of perspective and relativity.  [ return to text ]

6 Anger. Fear. Lust. Desperation. Guilt. Anger again. Lust. Lots of lust, really. Frustration. Confusion. [return to text ]

7 Crowley’s shoulder feels both lighter and quite bereft. And jealous of his wrist.  [return to text ]

8 Crowley sees it too now. Like a kaleidoscope at the edges of his vision. How frightfully embarrassing. Thank Someone Aziraphale was too polite to mention it earlier. It wouldn’t have gone down well. [[return to text ]

9 Crowley is embarrassingly prone to grand, sweeping gestures and he sees no point in stopping that now.  [ return to text ]

**Author's Note:**

> [Crowley is the living embodiment of this post.](https://constant-nxthing.tumblr.com/post/102251066803/you-cant-love-someone-unless-you-love-yourself) Change my mind.
> 
> It's also interesting because if you step back and strip down their conversations Aziraphale is 100% doing his best to deny/push back against Crowley's self-destructive tendencies over the years and protect the demon from this part of himself. It's interesting because so much of what is SHOWN in Hard Times is Crowley doing things for Aziraphale and Aziraphale going "no" but when you step back and look at what Aziraphale is saying "no" to... damn. My whole perspective has shifted. It's obvious in the St. James convo and in the Bently in the 60s, but it's been the SAME CONVERSATION. THE WHOLE TIME. ALL THE WAY BACK. IDK it just.. looks different stripped down to those lines of dialogue to me idk ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Despite the latin title this is not part of the Nemo dat quod non habet series/verse. I think it's a little too... raw and angry for that. I think what happened in that world before the swap was something much more gentle. But this is.......very adjacent to that universe too, if that makes sense lol. The dark mirror-verse maybe.
> 
> Also I never took Latin so I hope my cheeky switch of the common phrase makes sense. "Through the stars to adversity/hardship"
> 
> I had a sketch of a conversation lying about and a prompt on the Good Omens Fic Writers discord nudged the rest of this into existence.


End file.
